Under Thorns
by LoquaciousQuark
Summary: Six Swans AU. The weight of the magician's curse is heavy enough on her—silence, for she who would be merry above all things—but every dawn brings the reminder that her brothers and sisters bear the broader weight, because she stands, and they take wing. Felandaris only grows so many places, even in the wildness of the wood.


**AN:** I've really been struggling with stress nightmares lately, and when a particularly violent and horrifying one woke me up about two in the morning a few months ago, I realized there was no way I'd be able to get back to sleep anytime soon. Instead I opened a blank document, intending to sketch out a few notes for a wonderful ask I got the other day, and ended up with four thousand words spilling out over the next three hours until I finally felt I could get back to sleep. I finished it the next day after clinic, and though I don't quite know what it is and it hasn't been edited, I hope you enjoy it anyway. It's not what I usually write, but…I'm very fond of it, somehow.

_Anonymous said: I don't know if this sort of question has been asked before, but if you had to pick a fairy / folk tale to represent your OCs, what would they be? It doesn't have to be a direct parallel, just a story that has some sort of emotional mirroring/resonance with your character._

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**Recommended listening:** /watch?v=YzKLbB5B0tg&amp;t=32m10s for most of it, and /watch?v=YzKLbB5B0tg&amp;t=64m40s for the last section (beginning "Three years, three months, three weeks, and three days").

Enjoy.

* * *

**Under Thorns**

—

Once upon a time, in a great castle hidden deep in a green wood, there lived a princess with her six brothers and sisters.

They were not family by birth but by affection; the princess's parents had perished of a wasting sickness ten years before, and the princess's younger brother and sister, who were twins, had hoped to cure them by giving an ancient sorcery a cup each of their blood. Instead they had been cursed to wander the deep places of the world until they were called by name, lonely and shadowed, and though the princess searched for many years she could not find them to call them home again.

On her journeys, however, she met one by one travelers who became her kindred souls; and when she failed to save her brother and sister the twins, she brought them home to live with her in her great castle instead, for she had a generous heart and could not bear to be lonely. As the years passed, however, they became dear to her as anyone she had ever known; they became her sister the pirate, her sister the witch, her sister the captain of her guard; and her brother the storyteller, her brother the healer, and her brother the lost lord from a faraway kingdom to the north. While her heart ached for her family and she could not forget them, her sisters and brothers grew to be balms to her soul and constant companions in her lonely search. She was not content, but she was happy, and for some time this was enough.

Now it so happened that one day a magician passed through the wood and spied the great castle that lay hidden on its western edge. The castle was beautiful and the land rich and arable and the people happy, and because the magician had a black and envious heart he decided to take the kingdom for his own. He disguised himself as an old man with a lame foot and went to the beggar's door of the castle; a servant greeted him there and took him, as was the habit in this place, to the kitchens, where he was given a hot dinner and a corner near the fire where he could rest and wash his feet.

But the magician's heart did not soften at this kindness; instead he saw the fat pheasants dripping with grease over the flame, and the sheaves of dried herbs adorning every sill, and the hot loaves of bread given freely among the servants, and he grew even more determined to take everything for his own. When his dinner was finished he begged the housekeeper prettily for an audience with the great lord who had been so kind to him, and to all beggars, and because the housekeeper had a gentle heart she took him without question to the great hall where her mistress sat with her six brothers and sisters.

This was all the magician needed. His magic worked poorly where he was not welcome; but the moment the princess stood and offered to him her hand in greeting his black heart grew glad, and when she smiled at him he opened his eyes and laid upon the entire hall a powerful curse.

His magic was strong and terrifying even to the princess, who had seen much sorcery in her efforts to free her brother and sister the twins, and she did not understand at first the depth of it until the hall filled stone to rafter with wild bird cries and the endless beating of wings. Six hawks flew where her brothers and sisters had been before, their talons sharp and their wings red as blood. Everything was confusion and chaos as she reached for arms that could not embrace her; then the magician struck again with his staff, and light filled her eyes and ears until the princess knew nothing.

She awoke to the gentle nudge of a beak to her arm, and when she lifted herself from the ground she found she lay deep in the green wood on a bed of mossy earth, and her six brothers and sisters perched near her with wings outstretched and bright, strong eyes fixed on her every movement. She stretched out her hand and the smallest hawk, who had green feathers at her crown, alit carefully on her wrist, and the princess knew her for her youngest sister the witch, who had a sweet heart with no cruelty, and who did not deserve this fate.

But before she could weep, an old woman emerged from the wood. She was tall, her hair grey and her face lined, but her eyes were piercing as the hawks' and the princess, who knew a little magic, could sense the ancient power that lay hidden beneath the face as a river hid the depths of its strength at its narrowest places.

She did not extend her hand in friendship; nor did she offer sympathy to the princess and her cursed family. Instead she asked if she would break the curse, and when the princess leapt to her feet, the old woman smiled in satisfaction and drew a sigil in the air. "I have seen this magic before," she said, "and I know the man who made it has a small heart and a smaller mind. His magic is not without cracks. If you would break this curse, you must weave six shirts from felandaris and throw them over the cursed hawks; but be warned, girl, that if you laugh or speak a single word before the weaving is finished, the sorcery will never be broken. They will remain as birds to the end of their lives."

The princess's heart broke at this, for she had always had a merry heart and knew herself better than most, but she did not falter and the old woman smiled with pity. "It is not impossible," she said, with a voice like a dragon's voice, "but there is no curse that is not hard for its bearer, and it is best that you were given the weight, for you are strong enough to bear it." The princess nodded and made a gesture of thanks, and the woman smiled again and added, "Keep your eyes open as you travel, girl, for aid may come when least expected."

The princess nodded a second time, and then with a slide of shadow across a green leaf, the old woman was gone.

She wept, then, her brothers and sisters gathered around her with sorrow but no tears from strange eyes. Felandaris grew in few places that were not wild and fierce, and though the princess had known such places while searching for the twins, she had not been meant for wandering without a home. All the same, she did not have a heart given to grief, and when she could stand she wiped her eyes and squared her shoulders, and with the hawks wheeling high above her, she set off into the wood.

The princess had been taught how to read the earth by her father when she was a child, and for the first year she lived in the wood and drank from the clear streams that threaded it. She fashioned a staff from a straight black oak and learned to work her magic from her heart; she walked barefoot in the shadows and the light until she could move soundlessly to a hind's flank, could lay hands on its back and kill it swiftly with magic to its heart without pain. She found vole and rabbits for her brothers and sisters who were hawks, who did not at first know how to hunt from the high places; and when they learned she took from them the small creatures they found for her as well.

Felandaris did not grow as other plants, and she could not root sprigs of it to the ground again when she found it, but in the oldest places of the wood she found enough to weave two shirts. It was a hard vine with many sharp thorns, and the sap of it burned her fingers, and very soon the soft white hands of a princess gave way to the reddened, callused fingers of hard labor. Her brother the healer often brought her herbs for teas and poultices to salve the pain, and he watched her clumsy bandages with anger at the curse's unjust cruelty that she could see even through the hawk's sharp eyes. His wrath would have made her work harder were it unrelieved; but her sister the pirate and her brother the storyteller were clever and teasing, and while she could not laugh at their winged jesting it lightened her heart, and they often brought smiles to her face when she thought them least likely to survive.

Her sister the captain of her guard flew high guard most of all the hawks, watchful and wary, and the princess grew used to her fierce cries splitting down the sky, warning away all who would threaten her, warning her when they would not be threatened and she could not see. Her brother the lost lord was proud and gentle, his crest swept back in russet red, and he flew most often with the captain and hunted best, diving straighter than arrows at the prey who drew his piercing blue eye.

Her sister the witch sat often on her shoulder when she did not fly high and solitary, her kind heart not meant easily for the implacable hunt of a hawk's nature. She brought game rarely; more often she found bright stones, and sprays of white asters and gold roses that grew where the princess could not reach, and these things were comforts to her heart where no others could touch, for there is little softness in a wood that keeps felandaris at its heart and wilder things than witches in its shadows.

—

At the end of the first year the princess had neither spoken nor laughed, and she had become more of the wood than the castle she had been forced to flee. One night she awoke at the sound of a low cry, not very far and not animal; her brothers and sisters slept, their beaks nestled under their wings, and with the silence of practice she took up her staff and stepped into the moonlit trees. It did not take her long to find the source of it; a man had trapped himself in one of her low snares, meant for hare, and the lash had bitten deep into his ankle to hold him.

She had not seen another living human since the curse began, and for some time the princess could not shake her surprise. Then the man saw her, his pale head low and his eyes glittering with fear, and she shook herself enough to lift her hands in peace. "It is not enough you hunt me," the man snarled, "but I will not be trapped like a beast to be brought to heel!"

The princess shook her head, leaning her staff against the nearest tree, but when the man snapped at her approach like a wolf and reached for her, she drew instead her little rough knife from her belt and tossed it to the man's feet. He watched her warily, suspicious as the hare she hunted, but when she spread her hands again he snatched up the knife and cut himself free from the trap's snare. Even from the distance she could see that the flesh at his foot had been torn to bleeding, and when the man straightened she found other bruises dark on his throat and wrists, and other places where his worn shirt was stained with blood not black enough for age. Her heart was moved despite herself, and when she beckoned he hesitated, and gripped her knife, and followed.

She had not lit a fire, and the waking of six hawks startled the man into an oath when the princess led him to her clearing, but he let her guide him to a fallen log while she searched her bag for her healing poultices and her teas. Her brother the healer chided her angrily, perching on her shoulder and nipping her ear with a beak sharp enough to rend flesh; the princess ignored him, unable to leave a man wounded by her own hand, and though he flinched at her touch he allowed her to dress the places where he was hurt. The rest of her brothers and sisters circled quietly, watching the man as he watched them, made more shadows than birds by night, and when at last the princess was finished the man stood and withdrew to the edge of the clearing.

"Why are you here?" he asked, and the princess shook her head. "What do you seek?" he asked next, and she touched her hand helplessly to her mouth; "What is your name?" he asked at the last, and the princess could only smile without speaking.

The man scowled, eyes flashing, the stars glimmering down the scars that laced through his dark skin. Then he said, grudging as a miser, "My name is Fenris," and tightened his grip to her little knife.

The princess bowed, smiling, for she could see the man was grateful and unwilling to bare it, and she could see also that despite his bravado he wavered with exhaustion and old fear. She looked to the hawks and lifted her brow; her brother the healer flapped his wings angrily, but they did not protest when she led the man through the nightwood to a cave she knew to be small and safe and dry at the mouth of a nearby stream. He paced nervously at the back of the cave as she struck a fire and skinned a rabbit for them both; and yet when the food was ready he ate ravenously, and thrust his face to the stream until he could not drink more. Overcome with fatigue, he lay down at the mouth of the cave and went swiftly to sleep; the princess watched him a little longer, curious beyond words at this new story, until her eyes grew heavy and she slept as well.

They woke together the next dawn without speaking, and without speaking when she went to check her traps and to search for felandaris he went also. He kept safe distance and great watchfulness, and every time the hawks swooped he flinched and swore, but when she found a snare had tangled he aided her in its untangling, and when she brought down a doe he bent with her knife and cut it for her and carried the heaviest pieces to spare the weight. She changed his bandages in daylight and saw that the bruises were not only dark but bore the mark of fetters; though she said nothing and only smiled she saw his face grow hard with shame. Still, he stayed with her and ate, and that evening he asked her permission to remain in her cave a second night.

She nodded, and he did. And a third night, and a fourth, and though her brother the healer pecked her cheek and her sister the captain of her guard fluffed her feathers disapprovingly every morning, the man who was called Fenris did not leave.

He was a fair hunter, though better at strong-work, and guarded as a wolf of his secrets. The princess gestured occasionally to the scars on his chin, to the places on his wrists where the bruises faded day by day, but he did not sate her curiosity; instead she was forced to huff and sigh and smile at his reluctance, for even without speech she could not help her merriness. He scowled at her cheer when her snares bested his; she passed her hands over her mouth to hide her grins when his heavy footfalls flushed the hare from hiding into the reach of her magic staff and her brother the healer laughed a hawk's laugh, talons curling by his ear. She learned he disliked fish; she learned that he was clever, his hands dextrous, and that if he bent his mind to learn the tasks she set him he would not be satisfied until he mastered it.

She wrote him at the end of the third month her name, in charcoal and birch-bark from the fire. He took the bark from her and told her just as quietly that he could not read, his thumb smudging away the letters, and for the first time since her curse the princess felt herself most in danger of laughing, and worse, of despair.

But the moment passed, and her sister the witch tucked her hawk's head into the curve of her neck in comfort, and the princess smiled and touched the man's shoulder and shook her head. He caught her rough-worn hand in his and his brow pinched; then, both startled, he drew away and turned his head to the short spear he fashioned from wood and flint.

The month after this, he asked her of the shirts she wove from felandaris, and she touched the wings of her brothers and sisters gathered around her until he understood. The month after that, she gestured at the scars that lined his throat and he told her of the magician who had cursed him, great power at the cost of his mind, seven years of slavery before he had managed to escape in the dark of night. Her brother the lord from the north, who of all her brothers and sisters liked Fenris best and perched often on his shoulder, landed heavily on his knee and bent nearer, and the man stroked his head carefully with scarred fingers. The princess watched silently, her heart breaking, and that night when they slept she moved close enough that she might brush his hand in peace's offering. She woke instead with his arm about her shoulders, and her sister the pirate swooped and laughed at her the rest of the morning.

Summer yielded to winter, and as felandaris grew scarce the princess was forced to travel farther and farther to make her shirts. Three she had completed, and near a fourth, and though her brothers and sisters said nothing and looked on her with only affection, the passing of every month bore down on her like the weight of stones strung about her neck. Fenris's skills as a hunter grew; as the weather turned he brought her food, then furs, and when she wove by firelight and her fingers swelled and burned he made poultices and teas strong enough to sting tears to her eyes even as the pain eased. He taught her sharp whistles that he had known other slaves to use in his master's fields, ones that carried a league through trees no matter the wind; she teased him with looks until he smiled, and drew pictures in charcoal to make him laugh, and told stories as best she could with her hands and the aid of her hawks, stories of her childhood, of her parents, of her brother and sister, the twins, lost.

Her sister the witch brought him laurel, and the man tucked it with great embarrassment behind her ear; she found redblossom roots and dried them, and wove them into a band for his wrist that he wore without ceasing. She took his hand when he offered it, when they crossed a river slick with ice or edged along a bank too steep for easy steps. She did not always let him go, after, and he did not draw away.

—

At the end of the second year the princess had woven four shirts, and the man's white hair had grown long enough to need tying. The hawks knew him well enough as her, now, and though her brother the healer ruffled his feathers in annoyance every time he drew near, the princess felt for the first time since the magician laid the curse upon her that she might be happy.

Then, one night, she awoke from sleep to the harsh screaming of her sister the captain of her guard, and even as she reached for her staff the woods around her lit with torchfire and smoke and shouting. She could not see for her confusion; the hawks dove and shrieked around her, a mass of beating wings and talons ruddy with blood, and somewhere she could hear the deep, alarmed shouts of the man she loved, but she could not find him. Hands closed around her shoulder, her throat, and though she lashed out with flame and lightning she could not stop the blow that stripped her of all her senses, sending the world white, then black.

She woke alone in the wood. The sun shone harsh and strange, the trees that had been familiar to her stripped of all comfort and strength. Her hawks were gone, as was Fenris, and the men who had attacked; when she realized that they had taken with them even her bag of her finished shirts and her precious felandaris, she sank to her knees in the brush and covered her face in despair. But she could not scream, not until she knew they were beyond all hope, and though it took more strength than she knew she had she forced herself to her feet and found her staff where she had hidden it, and she followed their tracks into the wood.

Three days she tracked them, her eyes bent every moment to the earth at her feet, her callused fingers outstretched to every broken twig and bent grass-blade as sign of their passing. She did not stop to eat or drink, afraid to her bones of delay, and knew that this was what the old woman had meant so long ago about her strength to bear it. It was easier when she carried the brunt of the suffering, when the risk was hers alone; to know those she loved to be in danger and she helpless to protect them cut her to the heart, trembling her hands as nothing else, bringing tears of horror to her eyes when she needed most to see her path. Better to take every pain herself than leave an ounce of it to another, not when she still drew breath to stand through it.

But there was little time for fear, for as she drew near the edge of the wood she found the camp the hunters had set on this, their last evening before reaching the town at the end of the river. She could not wait; if Fenris were delivered to his captor there he would be beyond her reach, and her brothers and sisters also, if they lived. She could not defend one man to another without her speech; she could not save him at the cost of her brothers' and sisters' humanity. She must strike—she _must _—

Fenris she found first, his white hair brilliant even through the thick purple haze of rising twilight. He was bound hand and foot to a stake at the edge of the camp, his face and arms bruised and splashed with blood; beyond him stood a small cart, caged at the top and sides with fine metal mesh, and through it the princess could see the huddled figures of her hawks. Three men sat at the fire in the center, heavy and strong and bearded, their eyes cruel and swords laid close within reach. Her heart jumped with fear, but two years of silence had made her savage, and when she stepped into the torchlight it was a simple thing to lift her staff and call for fire.

She won surprise, and for some seconds they could not act through their confusion, but they were men of war and she was a princess with root-rough hands, and she could not kill all three of them before they struck. One fell at her feet first, blackened and still; the others caught her across her arm and her cheek with their swords before she struck again to fell the second with lightning drawn up from the earth. The hawks had awoken and screamed in helpless fury, but she could not spare them mind as the last living advanced on her with naked blade. Blood made her staff slick and alarm her sight dizzy, and she staggered as he struck her across her stomach with his sword; the old woman's words flashed through her mind again, stark and startling, and she remembered the curl of Fenris's fingers around her own, and the heavy familiar weight of her sister the witch on her shoulder, and instead of falling she lifted her staff and closed her eyes, and the heavens burst before her.

When the world grew still again, the last hunter lay dead at her feet. Without rage to bolster her the princess grew weak, but she did not dare to rest; instead she limped to the hawks' cage and broke the lock, and with her brothers and sisters screaming and wheeling tight circles around her she went next to where the man she loved lay still on the charred earth. Her hands trembled so that it took three tries to cut the bonds at his ankles, his wrists; the instant the enchanted rope fell away he reached for her, drawing her close against him, his voice low and rumbling in his chest with words she could not understand through the pain, his horror and relief swelling with every sound where she was silent.

Fever set in with her wounds, and though Fenris brought what remedies he could to the cave where she slept the dreams took her more often than not. When she had her mind she fixed her hand to her mouth, terrified of delirious speech dooming her hawks; when she did not she vaguely knew of his hand cupped to her cheek, his palm against her forehead, against her lips, guarding her when she could not guard herself. Her sister the pirate slept beneath one arm, her brother the healer beneath the other, and sometimes when the fever was weakest she heard the man she loved speaking to the others, guiding them to this herb or that one, this root or that one, taking what they offered when he could.

She woke on the seventh day. The dawnlight through the cave's mouth made her blink; a sigh beside her made her turn, and she found that on the other side of a sleeping hawk slept Fenris, his hand outstretched towards her. She laid her fingers over his and he woke; with a grumble of feathers he displaced the bird between them and drew closer, his hand on her hand, his eyes on her eyes.

"You came for them," he said quietly, and the princess nodded. Then, even lower, he added, "You came for _me_," and his amazement at her smile clenched around her heart like an iron fist. She reached for him and he bent his head to hers; she kissed him tenderly, and he kissed her, and when it was over he changed her bandages and took her hands in his and said, "You must not do this again."

She shook her head. He called her by the name of the birds that followed her, sometimes, and now he said it again, his forehead pressed to hers, his eyes shut. "I can't bear the thought of living without you," he sighed, and her heart leapt.

Still—there was more in her than only love, and at the thought of loss she remembered the loss of her felandaris shirts, and despite herself the princess began to weep. He grew alarmed and touched her wounds for pain; she plucked uselessly at her own threadbare shirt, and sighed, and wiped her face, and her sister the captain of her guard hopped awkwardly into her lap until she could stop the tears. Fenris drew away and came back again, his brow pinched with worry; then all at once he stood with an oath and ran from the cave. This time when he returned he carried a bag in his arms that she recognized, and she reached for it with shaking hands—

Four shirts she found, the fifth half-done, just as she remembered, and she bit her own finger to keep from laughing. She had never seen his smile so glad; when she threw her arms about his shoulders he held her easily, and kissed her neck, and her brothers and sisters the hawks called and laughed and fluttered their wings around them both.

—

On the last day of the third year of her silence, the princess pulled out by the roots the final spring of felandaris in the kingdom's wood. She had taught herself enough magic over the years to know the ways of finding it, and though she took her magic staff and pointed it in all directions she could find nothing but earth-scars and old, wild places made less wild by her weeding. Fenris stood at her side as she touched the little bag that held her shirts: short yet for the sixth, her sister the witch's weaving left less than half finished. Enough roots she had still to work all but the left sleeve; but she knew, as all who are cursed know, where she must find the last sprig of felandaris she needed.

In the heart of the old great castle that had once been the princess's home, there hid a room of great magic, where long ago a spell had torn the world from top to bottom to leave a narrow veil behind. It could not be worked by any who found it save those who knew the secret word, but the princess knew that all around the veil there grew felandaris, and redblossom, and all sorts of magical things that would not live in any other place. She looked to the west and sighed, and frowned, and made fists with her hands, and when he could bear it no longer Fenris asked her of her thoughts.

She could not find a reason not to answer, and of all people she thought perhaps he most deserved her truths, so that night when they built their little fire and her hawks had settled around them in sleep she took her charcoal and white bark in hand and began the story. He could not read, and her drawings held little talent, but he spoke in low tones of what he saw and she changed her images to suit, and at the last she drew herself, crowned, in sable and ermine, her six brothers and sisters who were hawks in the air behind her.

He stared at the last for many moments, his brow furrowed, and she did not understand his confusion; then he wiped the bark clean with his hand in one blow, and without looking, said to her, "You are the one who was lost."

She frowned, for his voice was bitter and she had not thought him petty, but his eyes when he turned to her were dark with sorrow. "My master," said he, "is the magician who cursed you."

Ah, thought the princess very carefully. Perhaps she ought to have expected this given the ways of magic, but she had not; instead she listened as he explained how the magician had summoned him to the castle after the princess had vanished, and the way he kept to his master's side to frighten the people who would not follow him, and of the times when fear had not been sufficient for obedience and he had wounded men instead. She could not bear to touch him and he could not bear to meet her eyes until he reached the end, when the woman who was his sister nearly died at his hand and the magician had ordered him to slay her out of spite. He could not—

So he had run. Fast as he could go and faster, his blade and bone left behind to the magician's unkind mercy, and he had not thought to stop his flight until the princess's trap had checked it for him with the whip-thin lash of her snare.

She could not forgive him with her speech, so instead the princess took his hand in hers and kissed it, one kiss for every fingertip, and his knuckles, and his shoulder, and his cheek, and his mouth, until the hard lines of his face eased and the bitter grief gave way to something nearer peace. She had not thought to love him at the first; she had not thought either to find in the woods the one man who would be less safe than she in the castle once her home. That night when she bathed in the river he came to her, his well-worn clothes left on the bank with her own, and when she smiled and reached for him he caught her face and kissed her and held her in his arms, and for a long time she let herself rush with hope.

Still, the days passed swiftly as they made their way westward through the wood that had become familiar to her as her home. The oak-green leaves above made up her grand archways; a tall aspen became her bower; the beds of pine-leaves stretched out before her bare feet laid a carpet thick and plush as any velvet. She did not gesture again to be parted from the man she loved, and he did not speak of leaving, and the hawks who circled them drew nearer in concern and eagerness alike. Her hands were red and ruined, her hair long and black and braided snarls, her eyes the eyes of wilder women who know no stone.

Six shirts woven from felandaris, wanting only a left sleeve.

—

Three years, three months, three weeks, and three days after a magician's curse spun her family into the shapes of hawks, the princess who had been lost came through the streets of her kingdom to her home. No one knew her, for she had much changed without and within, and she walked with a man with hair like the moon while six wild hawks with crests of gold and green and russet red soared, swooping, screaming, behind her.

No challenge came from the castle, made empty and dark by evil and greed, and the princess hardly knew the roads she walked for their loneliness. No crops grew, the fields withered and barren; the children before their homes were gaunt and thin and solemn-eyed, unspeaking as she passed. The great gate opened at her hand and she entered with her heart in her throat and fear behind, for if she could not find the felandaris she did not know her way, and it hurt her heart to see the suffering of her people gone on so long without reprieve.

The stone was old and familiar, even dark, and with unerring steps the princess made her way to the great hall that held the castle's heart, held high and clear in a tower above all the rest, every side of it open to the dazzling sky. She hurried up the stone stairs that spiraled around the tower, Fenris at her back and six hawks at his, and then she crested the last stair and faltered, despair rising like the sea to swallow her.

The magician sat in a golden throne before the veil, her shining crown on his head, her sable and ermine draped across his knee. Felandaris grew between the stones at every broken place, but the princess knew she would have no time to weave it, for even as the man she loved stood beside her and the hawks wheeled, the magician smiled, and their cries changed from anger to alarm, and from alarm to fear. He gestured at the princess's bare, dirty feet, at the red-winged hawks slashing across the morning who did not dare move closer, and he said with great derision, "You have come to break the curse."

She could not speak, but she could kill, and even as the words left him she lifted her oak staff and flung magic at his heart. He raised his hand and her spell broke a pillar instead; he clenched his fist and a black curse threw her to her knees. She gasped for air, afraid to her soul, but even as she stood again the man she loved had lifted his sword and stepped forward, his scars gleaming, and one by one her sisters and brothers the hawks swooped low, talons outstretched, wings broad and brilliant, their screams fierce enough to shake all the stars from the sky.

The magician stumbled, his magic disarrayed, and in the moment of its breaking Fenris thrust his sword at the magician's heart. It was a true strike but the magician's ward made it a glancing blow, and for several minutes they fought each other, sparks showering like rain across the stone, the felandaris, the redblossom and elfroot and the wild strange whispers of the veil. She drew magic when she could, afraid of striking the man she loved or the hawks that dove between them, and at the right moments when the sword recoiled her magic cracked the ward like a hammer, fire here, lightning here, a spear of glittering ice that sprang from her palm and shattered in the same heartbeat.

Then—all at once—

She felt it when the ward broke, a great cracking of the world and all shadows in it, and she threw her hands in the air and called with every part of her for every piece of magic she had ever learned. The man she loved took up his sword and found the place where she had broken it, and thrust it through, and with no strength to guard against it this time the blade pierced the ermine and the sable and the magician's black heart, and with a scream like the dead he fell back, amazed, clutched to life only by the dark magic that gave him power.

The veil seethed, awoken by the nearness of such evil, and Fenris who held the magician at the end of his blade closed his eyes as the winds began to roar, as the tower began to tremble and the stones split apart beneath their feet. Her hawks screamed, over and over, and the princess knew that there was no longer time for weaving, or for regrets, or for anything but the end of the curse and all sorrows with it. She tore the bag at her hip apart at the seams, three years of silence kept still in every stitch, and when she threw back her head her hawks were there, one by one, diving, crying, wings close to their sleek feathered bodies as she flung the first shirt into the air. The first broke through, her sister the captain of her guard; then came another, and another, and another, and another, and at the end her youngest sister the witch shrieked in fierce defiance and pierced through the last shirt, the unfinished one, missing only a left sleeve. Magic swelled, living, breathing, and the veil rippled with white power—

A voice said, clear, distant, "What conquers all?"

The princess threw open her arms, tore open a voice made rough and bare by three year's silence and a heart made scarred and bruised and better, and cried out with all her strength, "Love! Love! Love!"

The veil billowed and blew apart. Light broke in odd places through its shredding, pure and clean and bathing all the world in high glory such as it had never seen, and tears streamed from her eyes at the agony of it. She could not see the magician; nor could she see the man she loved, nor her hawks, nor anything but the brilliant wash of unchecked magic through her skin, her blood, and her heart.

It ebbed slowly, without sound, and moment by moment a new piece of the world returned to existence, fairer, somehow, than it had been before. The pillar that had been crushed had been remade; the clouds in the sky burned brighter than they had, and across the fields below a shadow had lifted that she had not known before to see. And at the veil, which lay still and smooth once more—

Before the veil knelt the man she loved, his sword forgotten at his side, his master made nothing more than slashed sable and a shining crown and a fine, faint ash that vanished with the wind. She knelt beside him, afraid and grieving, but he turned at her touch and opened his eyes, and she saw that more had been returned to him than his freedom. She drew a breath and said his name.

His eyes closed, opened once more; he said, "Again."

She laughed and he shuddered at the sound; a second time she said, "Fenris," and he caught at her hands as if he might be drowning. A third time she said it, and laughed again, and even as her voice soared into the sky he clutched her to his heart, laughing himself, his mouth on her mouth, his voice twining with her voice, the words of her heart made so easy by the shape of her lips. He trembled as she spoke, as if he could not bear to hear it, but he would not let her go and she had no wish for freedom, and so until they both could stand they did not part.

He kept her hand when they rose, and she felt its tightening when they turned to find six men and women stood before them, dressed magnificently in gold and silk and jewels, smiling broadly as they had not smiled in three years, for hawks' beaks are not given to merriment. The princess flew forward and embraced them, laughing again as she wept, for here at last were her brothers and sisters returned to her, the cursed felandaris made fine and beautiful by the breaking magic, and they held her to them and laughed with her, and spoke a thousand things at once atop each other. When the excitement had waned and they commanded themselves again, she turned and drew the man she loved into their midst, and though he had met them all as creatures of air it was their first meeting as creatures of earth, and she laughed to find he was embarrassed.

So she took his arm, and she presented him to her brother the healer, who was called Anders; and to her sister the captain of her guard, who was called Aveline; and to her brother the storyteller, who was called Varric; and to her sister the pirate, who was called Isabela; and to her brother the lord from the north, who was called Sebastian; and when she came to the last tears sprang to her eyes, for when she looked upon her youngest sister the witch, who was called Merrill, she saw that the unfinished shirt had left her sister unfinished too, and in the place of her left arm spread a shining hawk's wing instead.

But her sister Merrill had a gentle soul, and a heart not given to grief, and she came to the princess and embraced her until the feathers fell across her shoulders in warm and sheltering affection. "I will keep it," she said lightly, cupping the princess's face with her one hand to stop her sorrow, "for it will be my place to remember."

The princess, whose name was Euphemia, nodded, and smiled, and kissed her cheeks, and when all their tears were put away she put one hand into her sister Merrill's and one hand into her lover Fenris's, and she walked with them down the narrow circling stairs into the great hall, where all her people had gathered after the light had washed across their lands to heal them. They were greatly astonished to find their princess restored to them at last, and all her family with her in the raiment of kings and queens; and even more amazed at the company of the man with pale hair, who walked wild and close and silent as a guarding wolf but smiled tenderly to hear his lady's voice. Still, they welcomed them all home again, and that night they gave a feast so grand it was talked of for ten years, until the only truths people could recall were the bounty of food and the beauty of the princess who led the table with the man she loved.

They married in autumn at the edge of a wood that burned gold fire behind them. On her side stood three sisters, and on his three brothers; and in attendance were every lord and lady in the realm, and every merchant, and every farmer, and every man and woman and child who had heard the impossible tale of the princess who was lost and made silent by an evil curse, who returned triumphant with her lover after three years to break the blackest spell and turn fallow fields fair once more.

But their union did not end their journey, for even through the peace and prosperity that followed they both carried the weight of family gone. The twins still wandered beneath the earth, waiting for her call; and his sister who had nearly died to his master had vanished without a sign. Neither the princess nor her lover could be easy with their absence, and when at last their hearts could not bear the grief they left their kingdom and went instead to the open road, and the adventures that befell them there would span a volume a hundred times this size before they found those who were lost and brought them safely home again.

But those are stories for another day. This was only the prologue, for at the end of it the princess married, laughing through a heart overfull with gladness, and as the years passed she became known far and wide by the name the man who loved her had often given in her silence: the queen who was called Hawke.


End file.
